1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus for opening doors, and more particularly refers to a plate for mounting electrically-operated door openers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Electrically-operated door openers are widely used in hospitals and nursing homes and other public buildings where the elderly and partially incapacitated individuals occasionally find it necessary to open doors to gain entrance or to exit. Generally such doors utilize spring-loaded or pneumatically-loaded door closers to maintain the doors in normally-closed condition. It is difficult for weak or incapacitated people, or people entering in a wheel chair, to overcome the force of a door closer in order to open the door. It has consequently become a universal necessity to provide some doors with electrically-operated door openers to overcome the force exerted by door closers utilized to maintain the doors closed, or even the mass of the door itself, and to permit such weak or incapacitated individuals to gain access to, or to exit readily from, the building.
Electrically-operated door openers of the type described are available in the marketplace. However, because there is a large difference in door frames and ceiling heights, it has been conventional to provide a mounting plate upon which to mount the door opener, which mounting plate is designed to take Care of one or more but only some of such variations. One such mounting plate is shown and described hereinafter. Although this mounting plate is adapted to take care of a few differences in door frame and ceiling structure, it is not sufficiently versatile to take care of all situations which may be encountered. Moreover, the prior art mounting plate must be made very large in order to handle both normal and inverted mounting requirements.